TV Bloodbath: Violence on Prime
Time Broadcast TV A PTC State of the Television Industry
Report

I. Introduction

The Debate
is Over

Concerns
about the impact of television violence on society are almost as old as the
medium itself. As early as 1952, the United States House of
Representatives was holding hearings to explore the impact of television
violence and concluded that the "television broadcast industry was a perpetrator
and a deliverer of violence."[1]
In 1972 the Surgeon General's office conducted an overview of existing studies
on television violence and concluded that it was "a contributing factor to
increases in violent crime and antisocial behavior."[2]
In his testimony to the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Surgeon
General Jesse Steinfeld said, ""It is clear to me that the causal relationship
between televised violence and antisocial behavior is sufficient to warrant
appropriate and immediate remedial action… There comes a time when the data are
sufficient to justify action. That time has come."[3]

Over the
years, there have been literally hundreds of studies examining the connection
between media violence and violence in real-life, the results of which were
summarized in a joint statement signed by representatives from six of the
nation's top public health organizations, including the American Academy of
Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and the American Medical
Association: "Well over 1000 studies… point overwhelmingly to a causal
connection between media violence and aggressive behavior in some children.
The conclusion of the public health community, based on over 30 years of
research, is that viewing entertainment violence can lead to increases in
aggressive attitudes, values and behavior, particularly in children."
[4]

Today, the
connection between media violence and aggressive and violent behavior in real
life has been so well documented, that for many, the question is settled.
In fact, a position paper by the American Psychiatric Association on media
violence begins by declaring: "The debate is over."[5]
According to Jeffrey McIntyre, legislative and federal affairs officer for the
American Psychological Association, "To argue against it is like arguing against
gravity."[6]

Earlier this
year at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on neurobiological research and the
impact of media on children, Dr. Michael Rich, Director of the Center on Media
and Children's Health at the Children's Hospital of Boston testified that
the
correlation between violent media and aggressive behavior "is stronger than that
of calcium intake and bone mass, lead ingestion and lower IQ, condom non-use and
sexually acquired HIV, and environmental tobacco smoke and lung cancer, all
associations that clinicians accept as fact, and on which preventive medicine is
based without question."
[7]

The Impact
of Media Violence

Television
can be profoundly influential in shaping an impressionable child or adolescent's
values, attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors. Television reaches children at a
younger age and for more time than any other socializing influence, except
family. The average child spends 25 hours a week watching television, more time
than they spend in school or engaged in any other activity except sleep. Is it
any wonder then that children so readily absorb the messages that are presented
to them?

So what is
the cumulative impact of 25 hours of television a week?

It is
estimated that by the time an average child leaves elementary school, he or she
will have witnessed 8,000 murders and over 100,000 other acts of violence. By
the time that child is 18 years-of-age; he or she will witness 200,000 acts of
violence, including 40,000 murders.[8]
One 17-year longitudinal study concluded that teens who watched more than one
hour of TV a day were almost four times as likely as other teens to commit
aggressive acts in adulthood.[9]

Television
teaches viewers – especially young viewers, who have more difficulty
discriminating between real life and fantasy – that violence is the accepted way
we solve problems. Moreover, studies show that the more real-life the violence
portrayed, the greater the likelihood that it will be learned.[10]

And while
it's true that not every child who is exposed to a lot of televised violence is
going to grow up to be violent, "every exposure to violence increases the
chances that some day a child will behave more violently than they otherwise
would,"[11]
according to Dr. L. Rowell Huesmann of the University of Michigan.

Violent
entertainment leaves a mark, even on children who don't engage in aggressive
behaviors. Witnessing repeated violent acts increases general feelings of hostility[12]
and can lead to desensitization and a lack of empathy for human suffering. Over
time, consumption of violence-laden imagery can leave viewers with the
perception that they are living in a mean and dangerous world, giving them an
unrealistically dark view of life[13].

For children
who do act out aggressively, the results can be deadly. Week after week,
newspapers are filled with blood-chilling accounts of children committing
copy-cat crimes inspired by the latest horror film or violent video game.

The Slippery
Slope of TV Violence

Entertainment violence is a slippery slope. With repeated exposure, even the
most gruesome and grisly depictions of violence eventually seem tame. In time,
viewers become desensitized, so Hollywood has to keep pushing the envelope in
order to elicit the same reaction.

Lt. Col.
David Grossman, author of Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill, explains:
"Violence is like the nicotine in cigarettes. The reason why the media has to
pump ever more violence into us is because we've built up a tolerance. In order
to get the same high, we need ever-higher levels…the television industry has
gained its market share through an addictive and toxic ingredient.[14]"

Yet, despite
the mountains of research, the consensus of the medical community, and a growing
list of casualties from copy-cat crimes, Hollywood continues to produce
increasingly graphic and gory entertainment products, all the while denying any
culpability for the violent behaviors their products inspire.

Popular
entertainment came under intense scrutiny after the tragic April 1999 massacre
at Columbine High School, as published reports pointing to the Columbine
killers' fondness for first-person-shooter video games and the eerie
similarities between the murders and certain violent films began to emerge.
There were a handful of media mea culpas as some in the entertainment industry
grudgingly conceded that there might be a lose connection to violent
entertainment products. Even CBS President Leslie Moonves conceded "anyone
who thinks the media has nothing to do with [the bloodshed at Columbine] is an
idiot."

But has
anything really changed? Is television today any less violent than it was in
1999? In the past couple of years, attention to this issue all but disappeared
as our national consciousness has, understandably, turned to external threats.
Has Hollywood taken advantage of this paradigm shift to start reintroducing
violent content to prime time network television?

II. Study Parameters and
Methodology

PTC analysts
examined all prime time entertainment series on the major broadcast television
networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, UPN and the WB) from the first two weeks of the
1998, 2000, and 2002 November sweeps periods. The ITV network was not included
in this analysis because the network was launched just a few months before the
first study period and had limited original programming in 1998 and 2000. A
total of 400 program hours were analyzed.

Television
broadcasts of movies, news, and sports programs were not included in this
analysis.

PTC analysts
reviewed the programs for all instances of violence. Mild forms of violence
included threats of violence, mayhem or pyrotechnics (fires, explosions, car
crashes), deaths implied, and fist fights or martial arts fights. More extreme
examples of violence included use of guns or other weapons, depiction of blood,
graphic depictions (e.g. a dismembered body), deaths depicted, and torture.

III. Statistical Overview

Overall, violence
increased in every time slot between 1998 and 2002. On all the networks
combined, violence was 41% more frequent during the 8:00 p.m. (ET/PT) Family
Hour in 2002 than in 1998.

UPN and Fox had the
highest rate of violence during the Family Hour in 2002, with 7.5 and 4.67
instances per hour respectively. ABC had the largest percentage increase
during the Family Hour, going from .13 instances per hour in 1998 to 2
instances per hour in 2002 (an increase of more than 1400%).

The WB and CBS had the
least violence, both in terms of absolute numbers and per-hour rates during
the Family Hour in 2002, with .11 and .21 instances per hour respectively.

CBS and the WB were also
the only networks to show any improvement during the Family Hour. CBS reduced
Family Hour violence by 73.4%, going from a rate of .79 instances of violence
per hour in 1998 to .21 instances
per hour in 2002. The
WB network went from 2.5 instances of violence per hour during the Family Hour
in 1998 to 2.08 instances per hour in 2000, to .11 instances per hour in
2002. Overall, WB showed a 95.6% decrease in violence from 1998 to 2002. That
drop can be attributed almost entirely to the fact that Buffy the Vampire
Slayer moved from the WB network to UPN in 2001.

During the second hour
of prime time (9-10:00 p.m. ET/PT), violence was 134.4% more frequent in 2002
than in 1998. During the third hour of prime time (10-11:00 p.m. ET/PT)
violent content was nearly 63% more common in 2002 than in 1999.

Violent content was
found to become more common in later hours of prime time. Violence was 149%
more frequent during the second hour of prime time than during the Family Hour
in 2002. Fights were 16% more common; graphic depictions increased in
frequency from .02 instances per hour during the Family Hour to .54 instances
per hour during the 9:00 p.m. (ET/PT) time slot; and depictions of death
increased from .13 instances per hour to .87 during the second hour of prime
time.

The WB, UPN, and CBS had
the highest per-hour rates for violence during the second hour of prime time.
On the WB, violence spiked from an average of 1 instance per hour in 1998 to
6.7 instances per hour in 2002 (an increase of 570%). UPN had the largest
increase, going from .13 instances per hour in 1998 to 6.6 instances per hour
in 2002 (an increase of nearly 5,000%). CBS had the smallest increase, with 5
instances per hour in 1998 and 6.5 instances of violence per hour in 2002 for
an increase of 30%. NBC was the only network to improve during the second
hour of prime time, going from 3.14 instances of violence per hour in 1998 to
1.33 instances per hour in 2002 for a decrease of 57.6%.

Only three broadcast
networks continue their program feed into the 10:00 hour: ABC, CBS, and NBC.
All three of those networks showed a small increase in depictions of violence
during that hour from 1998 to 2002. ABC aired 27% more violence in 2002; CBS
aired 37.8% more violence; and NBC aired 78.5% more violence in 2002 than in
1998. CBS had the highest rate of violence during the 10:00 hour in 2002 at
8.1 instances per hour. ABC had the lowest, at 3 instances per hour.

In qualitative terms,
television violence seemed to have become more graphic over time. In 1998 the
most common form of TV violence during all hours of prime time was fist fights
or martial arts fights (where no one was killed). By 2002, these relatively
mild fight sequences became less frequent and were supplanted by more frequent
use of guns or other weapons. In 1998, 44% of all violent scenes during the
Family Hour were mild fight sequences compared to 32% in 2002. In 1998, 29%
of all violent sequences included the use of guns or other weapons. By 2002,
that number increased to 38%.

Other Findings:

Use or depictions of
blood in violent scenes were more common in the Family Hour in 2002 than in
2000 on ABC, NBC, and UPN (there were no depictions of blood within the study
period in 1998 during the Family Hour). Fox had no change (with .33 instances
per hour both years), and CBS and WB actually presented fewer violent scenes
with blood in 2002 than in 2000.

Looking at the second
hour of prime time, violent scenes containing depictions of blood were 141%
more common in 2002 than in 1998. ABC, CBS, Fox, and UPN all had more
frequent depictions of blood during this time slot in 2002 than in 1998. NBC
had 31.2% fewer depictions of blood in 2002 than in 1998.

During the second hour
of prime time there was a 200% increase in scenes depicting the use of guns or
other weapons between 1998 and 2002. NBC was the only network to reduce the
frequency of such scenes during this time slot by 2002. CBS remained constant
at 1.4 instances per hour of gun play or use of other weapons in both 1998 and
2002.

The per-hour rate of
deaths depicted has slowly climbed since 1998 in every time slot. During the
Family Hour in 1998, there were .06 deaths depicted per hour. By 2002, that
number reached .13. During the second hour of prime time in 1998, there were
.35 deaths depicted per hour. By 2002, it had increased to .87. During
the 10:00 p.m. (ET/PT) time slot, deaths depicted per hour rose from .23 to
1.7.

IV. Examples

1998

Examples from 8-9:00 p.m. ET/PT Time Slot

Brimstone
-- 11/06/98 8:00 p.m. Fox

A rapist who escaped from
hell comes into a woman's bedroom wearing a devil mask. He wrestles with the
woman, tossing her into a glass table, then onto the bed. He jumps on top of
her on the bed. She is holding a gun, and shoots him several times in the chest
at point blank range. The gun shots have no effect on him. It is implied that
he goes on to rape her.

Zeke attempts to send the
rapist back to hell by shooting him in the eyes, but to no avail. Zeke later
corners the rapist. He picks up a garden spade and is shown thrusting it
downward several times (presumably into the rapist's head, thereby destroying
his eyes and sending him back to hell).

Buffy the Vampire Slayer
-- 11/17/98
8:00 p.m. WB

Buffy beheads a demon with
a battle axe.

Examples from 9-10:00 p.m. ET/PT Time Slot

The X-Files – 11/15/98 9:00 p.m. Fox

A woman bangs her head
against the glass window of a police car. All of a sudden, blood spatters
against the window and the woman collapses in the back seat of the police car.
Investigators discover that her head exploded.

Millennium
-- 11/06/98 9:00 p.m. Fox

Agent Hollis walks into an
empty house. In a back room she finds what appears to be an autopsy table. She
goes through another door, and finds a room that appears to be covered in
blood. There is a hose of some kind that is dripping blood, the walls appear to
be coated in blood, and on the wall there is a meat hook. On a table she sees a
pair of bloody gloves, bloody knives, etc... There is a tub that appears to be
full of blood. Hollis sees a skull on a table.

Diagnosis Murder
11/05/98 9:00 p.m. CBS

A woman stabs her
publisher in the chest during an argument. He falls back into his chair, the
knife sticking out of his chest and blood running down his shirt. He dies.

Examples from 10-11:00 p.m. ET/PT Time Slot

NYPD Blue -- 11/17/98 10:00 p.m. ABC

A police officer at a
crime scene tells Andy that the victim is an old woman who has been hacked to
pieces. Andy walks in to the apartment. There are blood stains on the walls and
on the floor. He lifts the plastic sheet that is covering her. An old woman is
shown with blood covering her head, hair, chest, and pooled on the floor beside
her.

Jimmy: "God, look at
this."

Greg: "That's her foot...
Oh, here's both her feet here."

Andy: "Got to find her
hands too."

The camera pans down her
arm, showing bloody stumps.

Jimmy: "I got one."

Andy: "I want to meet the
son of a bitch that did this."

Jimmy: "There's no broken
fingers or nails."

Greg: "I only hope hitting
her with the bat came first."

Jimmy: "Son of a bitch,
son of a bitch."

Profiler – 11/14/98 10:00 p.m. NBC

Raymond places a sheet of
plastic over his mother's face and begins to suffocate her. She is trying to
fight back, but Raymond is overpowering her. He has his hands on the side of her
head, pulling the plastic tightly over her face. She struggles to breath, and we
can hear her gasping for air.

2000

Examples from 8-9:00 p.m. ET/PT Time Slot

Buffy the Vampire Slayer
-- 11/14/00
8:00 p.m. WB

Buffy fights a vampire in
the graveyard. She kicks him to the ground. She then knocks him onto a
gravestone. When Buffy goes to stake him, he pushes the stake into her abdomen.
Buffy is shown again with the stake in her. There is blood on her sweater and
her hands. We see her pull the stake out of her body.

Boston Public – 11/13/00 8:00 p.m. Fox

Two boys get in a fight in
the classroom. One of the boys bites a piece of the other boy's ear off. The
victim stands up, blood running all over his shirt. The biter spits the piece of
ear out of his mouth and it hits Harvey in the forehead.

Examples from 9-10:00 p.m. ET/PT Time Slot

City of Angels – 11/02/00 9:00 p.m. CBS

Damon goes into Gwen's
house and attacks her. She is only wearing a bra and panties and she screams
for help. He throws her against the bed and gets on top of her. He smacks her
across the face. He chokes her and continues to beat her on the face. Gwen's
brother Curtis come into the house and attacks Damon. They beat on each other
and glass breaks and they use lamps and pieces of furniture to hit each other.
Damon pulls a knife on Curtis. Curtis flips Damon off the balcony and Damon
falls below, dead. Damon is shown dead on the ground and there's a large pool of
blood under his face.

C.S.I. – 11/10/00 9:00 p.m. CBS

There is a flashback of
Amy killing Fay. Fay is thrown into a big fish tank. After Fay falls to the
floor, Amy hits her in the head with a pick axe.

The X Files
– 11/05/00 9:00 p.m.
Fox

Mulder is being tortured.
A metal circular saw is cutting his chest open. He screams and blood flies
everywhere as the saw cuts into his chest.

Examples from 10-11:00 p.m. ET/PT Time Slot

ER – 11/02/00 10:00 p.m. NBC

Luka slams a mugger into
an iron gate, then slams the mugger's head into concrete until it bleeds.

The District – 11/04/00 10:00 p.m. CBS

A man strangles a cab
driver with a piece of rope.

2002

Examples from 8-9:00 p.m. ET/PT Time Slot

Buffy the Vampire Slayer
– 11/05/02 8:00
p.m. WB

Buffy and a demon are
fighting. She throws a hatchet at him, which becomes planted in his chest. He
falls to the ground.

Providence – 11/01/02 8:00 p.m. NBC

A man is shown with a
knife in his chest. Blood is spreading around the wound. Kim yanks the knife
out of the man's chest.

Charmed – 11/10/02 8:00 p.m. WB

A warlock named Bacarra
needs a fresh human heart to complete his potion to vanquish the witches. He
puts a witch to sleep and takes her heart out while she is still alive. Her
eyes widen as Bacarra reaches into her chest. The sounds of his hand
penetrating her flesh can be heard. He is shown holding her heart in his hand.

Examples from 9-10:00 p.m. ET/PT Time Slot

C.S.I. -- 10/31/02 9:00 p.m. CBS

Gil cuts a finger off of a
man's dead body, takes out the bone, puts the finger over one of his own and
makes a fingerprint with it.

The District – 11/02/02 9:00 p.m. CBS

In a flashback sequence a
man inside a subway kills Mannion's friend by shooting him at point-blank range.

Angel – 11/03/02 9:00 p.m. WB

Charles kills Professor
Seidel by breaking his back and pushes him into a portal that will send him to a
hell dimension.

Examples from 10-11:00 p.m. ET/PT Time Slot

Boomtown – 11/03/02 10:00 p.m. NBC

Fearless shoots Vadim in
the head. He falls with a bullet wound in the center of his forehead.

C.S.I. Miami – 11/04/02 10:00 p.m. CBS

Adam shoots at his brother
underwater with a spear gun. Blood flows out of the wound. The brother turns
on Adam and stabs him in the stomach with a knife, killing him.

V.
Conclusion and Recommendations

"The use of horror for
its own sake will be eliminated; the use of visual or aural effects which would
shock or alarm the viewer, and the detailed presentation of brutality or
physical agony by sight or by sound are not permissible." – The Television Code
of the National Association of Broadcasters

Television is an invited
guest into the family home, and for that reason, broadcasters have a special
obligation to take care with the messages and images they present. There
was a time when broadcasters took that obligation seriously. Until fairly
recently, television broadcasters adhered to a voluntary code of conduct, the
Television Code, which was rooted in a desire to show the "highest standards of
respect for the American home."

Even though the code fell
out of use more than twenty years ago, it is sadly apparent that broadcasters no
longer have any interest in showing respect for the American home. They have
used the broadcast airwaves to deliver messages that poison impressionable young
minds. Despite the obvious concerns of millions of parents, public policy and
medical experts, depictions of violence on prime time broadcast television have
become more common and increasingly graphic, and there doesn't appear to be an
end in sight. Broadcasters will continue to push the envelope with TV violence
as long and as far as they are able. The only way to reverse this trend is for
viewers to push back.

Today TV sponsors play a
significant part in determining what broadcast standards are. Their ability to
influence programming decisions is potentially far greater than that of the
Federal Communications Commission, TV viewers, or even network's own standards
and practices departments. According to David Stanley, producer of Comedy
Central's The Man Show, "There was a time when the airwaves were a public
trust, and the television code was enforcing it. People were worried about
losing their licenses. Today, if there's a real difference, the line is being
drawn almost exclusively by the advertising industry. [If] advertisers are
willing to buy time on shows with more risqué content, they will go ahead and
[sell] it." Advertisers must use this unique position of influence to
encourage greater restraint in the depictions of violence on prime time
broadcast TV.

Although broadcast
affiliates are tightly constrained by affiliation agreements, they do still play
an important role in standing up for community standards. Community concerns
about TV violence must be communicated by the affiliate to the broadcast
network, and the affiliates need to exert their right to preempt programming
that violates their community's standards.

Lawmakers have been
concerned with the problem of media violence since 1952, but there are no laws
on the books prohibiting or restricting depictions of violence on television.
Without an enforcement mechanism, Congress has no real power to force the
entertainment industry to address the problem. Perhaps it is time, as Senator
Sam Brownback and FCC commissioner Michael Copps suggested earlier this year,
for the FCC to make a priority of reducing TV violence and to expand the
definition of broadcast indecency to include violence.

Parents Television Council,
www.parentstv.org, PTC,
Clean Up TV Now, Because our children are watching, The
nation's most influential advocacy organization, Protecting
children against sex, violence and profanity in
entertainment, Parents Television Council Seal of Approval,
and Family Guide to Prime Time Television
are trademarks of the Parents Television Council.